As Arizona Fires Rage On, Inquiry Into Firefighters’ Death Focuses on Wind

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — A swelling army of firefighters aided by bulldozers, air tankers and helicopters struggled on Tuesday to subdue the forest blaze that killed 19 elite firefighters on Sunday and continued carving a destructive path through two mountainside communities whose residents were forced to flee.

The Forest Service sent four C-130 planes to work on this fire and on another wildfire in Kingman, on the western edge of the state, which doubled in size overnight Monday and charred more than 2,300 acres on Tuesday. Each of the planes is capable of dropping 3,000 gallons of water and fire retardant in less than five seconds, a Forest Service spokesman said.

The firefighters’ chief opponent has been the wind, which gusted at 20 miles per hour throughout the day from the south and southwest, only to twirl under thick storm clouds that have for days moved over the area in the late afternoons.

The clouds, according to Stewart Turner, a fire behavior analyst in the multiagency team that has taken command of the operation, “push the wind down, then they push it out in different directions, in unpredictable ways.”

Late Monday, the wind grounded the aircraft that had been dropping water and fire retardant over the flames.

As another thunderstorm was forecast to move over the region, pilots were warned Tuesday morning that they might have to ground their planes again, said Jim Wallmann, a meteorologist working at the command center outside Peeples Valley, one of the villages that the fire has partly destroyed.

Increasingly, the shifting winds — part of a meteorological phenomenon known as outflow — have become the main focus of investigators who arrived from several states on Tuesday to begin piecing together what happened to the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, the elite firefighters killed Sunday.

Ralph Lucas, a battalion chief for the Prescott Fire Department, said that firefighters spoke of “a large thunderstorm above the fire” just as the men deployed their emergency shelters, a last resort when they have no place to hide and no time to run.

“That may have led to the incident,” Chief Lucas said.

The crew’s 20th member and only survivor was Brendan McDonough, 21. He was in his third season and was working as the lookout. His task was to post himself on top of a hill and warn his comrades of any changes in the way the flames were moving and the weather behaving. At one point, Mr. McDonough faced a choice: Stay and risk being engulfed by flames or leave for safer ground.

He left, and as he headed downhill, he crossed paths with the member of another Hotshot crew, who pointed at the place where he had been standing, noting it had completely burned out, said Wade Ward, a spokesman for the Prescott Fire Department.

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Juliann Ashcraft, the wife of Andrew Ashcraft, 29, a firefighter who died on Sunday, and her father-in-law, Tom Ashcraft.

CreditKrista Kennell/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Juliann Ashcraft, the wife of Andrew Ashcraft, 29, a firefighter who died on Sunday, and her father-in-law, Tom Ashcraft.

CreditKrista Kennell/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Firefighters gathered in an embrace during a memorial service in Prescott, Ariz., on Monday.

CreditTom Tingle/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

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A memorial near Yarnell, Ariz., honors firefighters of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who died in the wildfire.

A section of the town of Yarnell, Ariz., that was destroyed by a wildfire.

CreditRick Wilking/Reuters

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Homes burned in the wildfire, which was caused by a combination of windy conditions and high temperatures.

CreditDavid Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

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Flames topped a ridge as the Yarnell Hill fire moved toward Peeples Valley, Ariz., on Sunday.

CreditTom Story/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

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Firefighters tried to protect a business in the Glenn Ilah area.

CreditDavid Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

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Residents were forced to evacuate Yarnell and Peeples Valley.

CreditDavid Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

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Started by a lightning strike on Friday, the wildfire spread to 8,000 acres by Monday.

CreditDavid Kadlubowski/The Arizona Republic, via Associated Press

Mr. McDonough has asked to be left alone. In a statement read by Bob Orrill, of the Southwest Incident Command Team, Mr. McDonough said he was “physically healthy,” but is “working through the process” of dealing with what happened.

The size of the fire has remained steady: 8,400 acres, or roughly 13 square miles, burning through canyons, ridges and slopes covered by parched piñon pine, chaparral bush and yellowed grass. It is a small area, compared with other Western wildfires, but as of Tuesday the blaze had yet to be contained. Mr. Turner of the multiagency Southwest Incident Command Team said it might not be until the wind subsides or rain falls that significant progress would be made.

The uncertainty and the instability of the weather have left residents here on edge. A modest yet steady flow of people has come through the shelters set up by the American Red Cross here and in Wickenburg. Some stay overnight. Others take showers and grab a bite. All have questions, said Trudy Thompson Rice, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross’s Grand Canyon Chapter.

“They want to know about the firefighters, they want to know what they need to do to move forward, but they also come for support, just to see one another,” Ms. Thompson Rice added.

At a community meeting at Prescott High School, dozens of residents gathered on the bleachers to hear the latest update and to ask questions. One woman wondered how she would know if an evacuation order is given for her area. (The city has a reverse 911 call system in place, so she would probably get a call, she was told.) One man asked: “When can we go home? What’s going on?”

Clay Templin, one of the fire’s incident commanders, said that before anyone could go home, “I have to make sure this fire won’t go ahead and cross the line.”

There were 500 firefighters working the line on Tuesday and at least six aircraft helping them from above, with more to come. They had built a cordon around the fire, hoping to salvage what is left of Yarnell and Peeples Valley, old gold-mining villages southwest of Prescott that have been under an evacuation order since Sunday.

Command of the operations has been in the hands of the multiagency Southwest Incident Management Team since Sunday, as soon as it became clear that the fire was growing too big and out of control for local crews to handle, but before the 19 firefighters ran into trouble.

They were deep into the mountains southwest of here, lugging enough equipment to cut deep trenches around the flames, one of the strategies that Hotshot teams use to try to contain fires.

As a storm moved over the area, one of them radioed the commanders at a base camp nearby, saying the men, trapped, were going to deploy their emergency shelters, which are designed to protect them from intense heat, but only for a short period.

That was the last time anyone heard from them.

Correction:July 4, 2013

An article on Wednesday about the inquiry into the death of the 19 firefighters killed in an Arizona wildfire misspelled, in some copies, the surname of the sole surviving firefighter in the group known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots. He is Brendan McDonough, not McDonogh. The article also misstated, in some copies, the given name of a spokesman for the Southwest Incident Command Team. He is Bob Orrill, not Paul.

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